Elbow |
Crystal Castles |
The Teenagers |
We Are Scientists |
Neon Neon |
Fuck Buttons |
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Devotchka |
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A varied set of releases this week, from chart-scraping hopefuls Elbow through to pysch-prog-space nonsense from Fuck Buttons. The Elbow album is pretty decent, certainly a better effort than Leaders of the Free World, even teaming up with Richard Hawley on one track. There’s synth-dance-pop a-plenty too, with excellent releases from Neon Neon and The Teenagers, and a slightly disappointing full-length from Crystal Castles. Back for a second helping are Be Your Own Pet and We Are Scientists, the latter attempting to prove they can better The Great Escape, which of course, they can’t. Be Your Own Pet on the other hand continue along the perverse scream-quiet path trodden by the debut. It’s not a bad trip though. Elsewhere, Foals’ cohorts Youthmovies get around to releasing their debut LP, while Chris T-T releases the final episode of his London trilogy, Capital. I saw said T-T more than a few years back as a support act. He had a song about how Eminem was shit. I think that says it all. Girls In Hawaii present some lovely indiepop from Belguim, and a lovely dead animal on their cover. Lovely. Also from continental Europe is the interesting release from Freiband & Machinefabriek where a 30-second sample of lap steel has been passed back and forth between the two producers for months, the end result being Oahu, a full length full of distortion, atmospheric noises and really not very much lap steel. Album of the week, however, has to go the superbly monikered Fuck Buttons, whose album full of blips and bobs has one of the crappest names and crappest covers in a long time, but still manages to be bloody great. Check out their Myspaz for what they sound like, because to be honest written description doesn’t do it justice.
Crystal Castles – Air War
Elbow – Grounds For Divorce
The Teenagers – Love No
